


as you are, as you were

by silentlypunk



Series: lights will guide [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Kinda, M/M, Multi, No Angst, Other, Shapeshifting, edit 2020: verse continued :), in case old readers got confused, it's really minor dw dw, non-graphic violence/injury, originally named walk a different World, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 09:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19438684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentlypunk/pseuds/silentlypunk
Summary: roughly based on well-known prompt by tumblr user siniristiriita:The most wanted woman in town has announced that she’ll only marry the one who can open her front door with the key around her cat’s neck. Many men try to hunt the cat down, chase and trap it, but to no avail, the cat is simply too quick, smart and clever, and always finds a way to evade and avoid them.You are the first one to figure out the obvious: do not chase the cat. The cat is befriendable. get the cat to trust you, to genuinely enjoy your company, and you can hang out with the cat. You may eventually be allowed to touch the cat. The cat will freely let you take the key.Secondary plot twist: the woman is a shapeshifter. She is the cat.





	as you are, as you were

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer that hunting is only cool in the imaginary fantasy realm. hunting is no longer a necessity in city-fied life and should not be practiced leisurely due to the unnecessary loss of animal life (could care less about the loss of human life in that context lol).
> 
> that being said, please move onto this magical mess.

_“Aren’t you running out of time?”_

_“Yes. I am.”_

_“So you better do something about it before —”_

_“I am well aware of the consequences.”_

_“But you’re still going with the usual?”_

_“…I will be more involved this time.”_

_“Alright, then.”_

\- 

Bokuto has been in the woods many many many times, but he has never seen _this_.

Only a few feet away from the pond, a mangy black cat stands unsteady on its two back legs, yowling furiously and almost punching the air. Its spiky fur is shiny, catching the late afternoon light; Bokuto suspects that it has already suffered an unlucky fall into the shallow water. Above him, a brown owl hovers, occasionally swooping down and out of reach again with a soft hoot.

The cat jumps, catching one of its talons for a brief moment before thudding ungracefully to the ground. The owl drops down to give it a sharp nip. The cat yowls in pain, then it jumps up and the cycle begins again.

Next to all the commotion, a small calico cat naps in the shadow of a bush.

Bokuto crouches down as quietly as he can on the crunchy forest ground, entranced. He watches them play, snickering to himself every time the black cat’s tail flickers with clear annoyance as the owl weaves gracefully in and out of its clutches.

When he eventually has to shift his balance, a twig crackles under his feet.

He winces as the animals freeze and look straight at him.

“Sorry,” he whispers. It’s illogical to speak to animals, yes, people have told him so many times, but Bokuto has believed since he was a child that they do understand, they really do, and anyway it’s only polite, isn’t it? “Please keep playing.”

The animals stare at him, then at each other, then the owl disappears into the treetops while the black cat walks up to him in a most agreeable manner. It has narrow eyes, and maybe it got injured or something, because its left eye doesn’t open and its mouth stretches upwards on the right, like it’s smirking permanently. The calico raises its head and licks at its paw.

“Oh, hi,” Bokuto says as the cat butts its head against his leg. “Sorry about that.” 

The cat paws at the leather sack behind him, which is heavy and stinks of blood. There are flies lining the fabric, but they can’t get through to the meat inside, which is all that matters. “You wanna know what that is?” Bokuto asks, as the cat sniffs the bag curiously. “It’s venison. Deer. Just killed it today, I’m bringing it back to trade with the bakery, they want the thighs for five loaves of bread…” 

The cat chirrups at him. Bokuto looks up to the sky and stands up, stretching as he does. “Well, I gotta get back. Sorry about ruining your game.”

He gives the mangy cat a few pats and hoists the heavy bag of venison onto his shoulder.

The cats watch him fade into the shadows of the forest.

-

Apparently Bokuto chose the worst time to take a hunting trip after that, five days up on the nearby mountains by commission to kill the monstrous boar that’s been gutting Terushima’s sheep, because when he comes back the whole village is the busiest and the most gossipy it has ever been, ever.

“Hey,” Komi shouts right as he closes the front door. “Bokuto’s back! Bokuto, how do you catch an owl?” 

“Bokuto, we need to go kill some of the vermin in the market, stat,” Konoha declares, already holding up rat traps.

“You idiot, everyone’s gonna be doing that,” Sarukui groans. “What else do owls eat that’s harder to get?”

“What’s going on?” Bokuto asks over their dissent. “Why are we catching owls?”

Shirofuku stumbles down the stairs. “Not just any old owl, Bokuto,” she says, all fluttery with excitement. “Akaashi Keiji’s pet owl!”

_Akaashi Keiji?_

“The mystery guy who lives in the woods,” Komi says, exasperated. “The guy who no one knows anything about, except that he’s hot as hell, he’s single as hell, and—”

“Most importantly,” Konoha interrupts, “he’s _rich_ as hell.”

Shirofuku swats all of them. “He came into town a few days ago, talked to the mayor for a little bit, then went up to the balcony and announced that whoever managed to get the key from around his pet’s neck and unlocked his front door would become his betrothed! Everyone went _insane,_ a bunch of girls fainted on the spot, of course loads of people were attracted to him in the first place but the _gold—”_

“—but no one knew what his pet was, people were spouting crazy rumours about dragons and sphinxes—”

“—but _yesterday_ , this brown owl flew in, and there was a blue ribbon around its neck with a little silver key on it—”

“—but no one could catch it, it was super fast and so _clever—”_

“—it flew off after a while, but it showed up again the next day, it’s super well-trained—”

“—there’s talk of selling animal potions and lures, have you heard?—”

The next day, Bokuto wanders down to the town centre, curious to take a look at the bird himself. Although his friends are completely worked up over the prospect of _money_ , Bokuto thinks they’re comfortable as they are, and sure maybe the guy was really hot, but wouldn’t that mean he would have loads of choices to pick from? Bokuto is the best hunter in the village — one of the best in the country, actually — but plenty others had more…refined skills, like Konoha and Sarukui who are tailors, or Shirofuku who is one of the best tapestry artists in the region, or Washio who is head of the town’s legislation —

The point is, Bokuto doesn’t want any part in the game. He’s seen how insane the village girls can get when Prince Oikawa visited their village once. No amount of money is worth joining those who seem genuinely interested in the guy, because then he increases the participant pool, and it wasn’t like he’d get the key anyway because that would mean getting _really_ close to the animal and he wouldn’t want to hurt it by accident. 

He stops in front of the town hall and hoists himself onto the fountain, where he’s sure to have a good view over the reported chaos; far enough from the buzzing crowd, but not so far that he can’t see what’s happening. 

Two girls whisk by him, holding butterfly nets and assorted bird feed. “His _betrothed_ ,” one of them giggles. “No one else could use that word and not sound like a pretentious asshole, right?”

“Smart and pretty, what a catch,” her friend replies, and then their conversation fades into the antsy crowd.

 _None of their methods are gonna work,_ Bokuto thinks to himself. _Wild owls hate village bird feed, and the guy lives in the woods._

A loud _mrrow!_ sounds from ground level, and Bokuto looks down to see a black tail whisking around around his ankles. He has to actually look under the fountain to see the cat. Its amber eye gleams in the shadows and it—

_Hold on. Eye, singular?_

“You’re the cat from the woods!” Bokuto says, delighted. He gets onto his knees to look at it properly. The cat draws itself upright with an almost imperious air, stretched mouth only serving to emphasise the illusion. “Hello again!” 

The smaller calico peeks out, almost completely hidden behind its black-furred friend.

“Aww.” Bokuto sits cross-legged on the cobblestones, an arm’s length away, one hand stretched out for the kitties to sniff. Sure enough, the black cat takes two steps forward to sniff at his fingers, and proceeds to walk right up to Bokuto, sitting down in front of him with a swishing tail. The calico sniffs more cautiously, but still seems reluctant to come into the light. “It’s okay! Aw, both of you are super cute!”

The black cat looks like the crowd, then looks back at Bokuto with its head tilted to one side, as if asking a question. Bokuto scratches behind its ears and grins. “They’re loud, huh? I’m just here to watch, all my friends are talking about gold, gold, gold. I’ve never seen the village this hyped up before. Hope they don’t scare you away.”

The town clock chimes, once for each hour, the hands hit twelve, and the crowd falls into hushed, pregnant silence.

One person points to the sky, where a dark speck is descending from the clouds, backlit by the sun. The lower it gets, the bigger its size, until the entire crowd is holding its breath when Akaashi Keiji’s pet owl elegantly lands on the spire of the clock with a soft flutter of its wings, a mere few feet between the nearest butterfly net and someone who’s climbed to the top rung of a ladder .

Bokuto stares slackjawed at the bird, as does everyone else in the crowd — tense and unmoving.

The black cat lets out a soft hiss, and suddenly everything is chaos.

It’s like dangling a hunk of meat above a pack of starving wolves. Nets swing wildly; seeds scatter into the air like confetti; mice of varying sizes and colours, both dead and alive, thrust up above the crowd in boxes and plates; a few lie in ambush, poised on ladders and rooftops, waiting to lunge. Girls coo and shriek, making unconvincing chirps or hoots in an attempt to pique its curiosity. And everywhere, cages upon cages upon cages.

A normal woodland owl would have fled the scene immediately.

The pet owl isn’t skittish in front of the crowd, and probably accustomed to cages. It circles above the crowd before swooping in — taking a nibble out of a mouse, catching a mouthful of seeds in midair, deftly evading the swooping nets, all while weaving through the thick crowd of instruments. It rises above the danger zone, hovering in midair, and gazes almost disdainfully over the crowd. A ribbon tied around its neck slips out from underneath the plumage; the glint of silver is obvious, and the crowd grows even more antsy.

Bokuto has his hand over his mouth. If anyone had caught him laughing at their efforts, he’d be provoking around 60 townspeople with prospective weapons. The black cat is kneading at the fabric of his trousers; even the little calico had stuck its head out from the shadows, observing the antics with a watchful gaze. The clever way that the owl had been darting in and out of the crowd’s clutches was _breathtaking_.

“Oi, you,” Bokuto catches the cat just as it’s about to make a big playful swipe at his knee. “Don’t tear my clothes! That’s your friend, right? The same one I saw playing with you in the woods last week? It’s got the same, uh, flying style. Very swoopy.”

The black cat butts its mangy head against Bokuto’s knee and lets out another _mrrow._ The permanent stretch of its mouth looks a bit smug.

“I guess that’s a yes, then.” Bokuto grins as the cat climbs into his lap. There’s a loud shriek from the crowd, and Bokuto looks up just to watch someone make a lunge at the bird. The man falls off the top rung of his ladder and onto the ground with a loud crash as the owl flits away easily, perching back on the spire. Its head swivels around at the crowd below.

The cat is purring in his lap, oblivious to the clumsy attempts to trap the graceful creature. “Who is this Akaashi Keiji anyway?” Bokuto wonders out loud, stroking the cat lightly. The calico has turned its watchful eyes on him, so Bokuto stretches out his hand again, withdrawing when it shrinks away.There’s no forcing an animal’s favour; the townspeople probably knew that and therefore resorted to traps and lures. “Heard he’s super rich. And smart. And pretty. So he’s probably way out of my league, right? And so many people are after him, there’s no point in joining if I don’t really mean it, right?”

The cats ignore his words, content to bask in their blissful kitty world. “Guess you wouldn’t know,” Bokuto tells the black cat with a little chuckle, and looks back up.

He nearly jolts the cat out of his lap because he can swear that the owl is staring _dead straight at him._

 _Maybe it sees its friends,_ Bokuto thinks, looking to the two cats near him. Honestly, he can’t even see for sure if its gaze is directed at him, but he can _feel_ it, heavy and intense, like five thousand eyes are watching him at once.

The black cat sits up straight and sticks it tongue out at the owl. Bokuto hesitates, then picks up the cat’s front paw — eliciting a surprised chirp — and gives it a little wave, laughing to himself.

The owl _tilts_ its head for a brief moment, before doing one final circle and flying off in the direction of the woods.

The crowd lets out a collective groan. Someone throws their cage against the wall, denting it beyond repair.

-

The only reason Bokuto goes to the town pharmacy the next day is because, well, people say he’s stupid, but he’s pretty confident that skin shouldn’t be turning green. Also Shirofuku almost literally dragged him here, horrified after he collapsed at home with a fever.

And it’s here that Bokuto receives some devastating news.

“You’re _not_ to go hunting for a full two weeks,” Daishou tells him severely, putting away his bandages and antibacterial concoctions as Bokuto tries not to look too much at the dark bowl of his own blood. “Minor wounds I know you can take care of, but I can’t believe you didn’t come to see me directly after a boar _gutted you in the thigh_.”

Bokuto gulps, anxious eyes flitting around the room. Pet snake, specimen, herbs, anatomical diagrams. It doesn’t help. “Sorry, doc. I thought it’d be fine since Hana wrapped it up…”

Daishou throws up his hands in exasperation. “Hana is a shepherd’s wife, not a doctor!” he snaps, but Bokuto knows him well enough to know that it’s out of concern. He throws the towel that he’d gagged Bokuto with into the sink, as well as the blood-stained one, and also the sweat-stained one. “Though it’s good that she did what she could, otherwise it’d be amputation for you. And thank you very much for getting rid of that beast, but it won’t help much if the town’s best hunter fucking _dies_ in the aftermath!” 

“Hey, I won’t die that easily!” Bokuto puffs up, thumping his chest confidently. Well, as confidently as he can after he’d literally been sobbing with pain as Daishou put needle after needle into his thigh. “You said it, I’m the town’s best hunter!”

“Yes, Bokuto, you won’t die after I literally had to _drain_ infection out of you,” Daishou grits out. He sits down on a stool and levels him with a narrow, almost-accusatory stare. “Look. I won’t charge you this time, on account that you single-handedly saved our town’s entire flock from a rampaging boar. But _promise_ me you won’t be active for more than two hours a day, otherwise I will lock you in the pharmacy basement and Mika _will_ keep guard over you.”

Bokuto cringes. Mika is wonderful and helpful and nice, but Mika is also _scary_ , and sometimes Bokuto wonders if Daishou’s ever suffered horribly when she was having a bad day. “I promise I won’t be active for more than two hours each day.”

“Good.” Daishou hands him a pair of crutches and pats his shoulder. “I’ll see you in two days’ time. Go get your medicine from Mika.”

“Yessir.” Bokuto eyes the crutches resentfully, having seen enough of them in his lifetime, but eventually hobbles towards the front of the house where Mika is studying a thick book. Shirofuku sits nearby, mending a blanket.

Both of them raise their heads when Bokuto announces his presence with a loud clunk from one of the crutches. Mika flips her book shut and reaches to the shelves behind her; meanwhile, Daishou makes his way towards Shirofuku, who happily shows him the patterns she’s weaved into the blanket. 

“Since you won’t take our money,” she says. Daishou waves his hand flippantly at her.

Mika packs medicine, bandages, and a spare bottle of elderflower into the basket that Shirofuku has with her. “Make sure to change them twice each day, okay?” she says, looking up at Bokuto, who gives her a thumbs up.

“Thank you, Daishou,” Bokuto says sincerely. Daishou rolls his eyes.

“Save it, hunter,” Daishou replies. “You’re getting me plenty of meat and leather after recovery, you hear me?”

“Consider it done!”

Once they’ve left the pharmacy, Shirofuku stares at the thick bandages around his left thigh, then says, “Can you—”

“—Make my way back without dying? Yeah, course,” Bokuto interrupts, and Shirofuku huffs at him.

“I need to get more thread,” Shirofuku says. “For the royal commission. But I don’t trust you to go home alone. Go wait for me in the town square, I won’t be long.”

Bokuto slumps. “Okay, Yukippe,” he sighs, and they part ways.

He sits down in the same spot on the fountain as yesterday, except right now there’s no crowd and everything is a lot calmer. Just like it used to be.

The clock chimes once, twice, thrice. The afternoon sun makes him squint at the ground, sulking at his injury, and he doesn’t notice the amber gleam of cats’ eyes watching him carefully from the shadows in a nearby alleyway.

-

It’s a bit stupid, maybe, but Bokuto thinks that he doesn’t really have anything better to do in these two weeks than watch the daily attempts to snatch Akaashi Keiji’s key. At least it’s entertainment. So he makes a habit of hobbling over at half eleven, perching on the fountain, and waiting for the people to show up.

And today is no different. Daishou’s looked at his leg again, maintained the firm two-hour rule, so Bokuto resigns himself to more days of hobbling and non-hunting. He settles on the fountain at his usual time with a sigh.

A crowd slowly forms. The clock hits twelve. The owl appears. After around ten, fifteen minutes of frenzied activity, the owl soars up and disappears behind tall building, and the crowd calms down.

Bokuto laughs quietly by himself, eyeing the various new potions and toys created as attempts to lure the creature.

The grumbling crowd slowly disperses, and suddenly the area is quiet again.

Or so he thinks. Because just as he hoists himself up onto his crutches to leave, having sat on the fountain ledge for a full hour, three things happen at once.

First, the little calico appears in front him, seemingly having been hidden under the fountain this whole time, and rubs its body on Bokuto’s calf, looking at him with big lamplike eyes. Its tail is raised high, ears upright. The mangy black cat is nowhere to be seen.

“All friendly today, huh?” Bokuto says in amazement. His fingers are itching to stroke it, but he can’t crouch down on account of the wound, so he leans heavily on one crutch and reaches down, barely grazing smooth white fur. “So you’ve decided I’m a good guy now? Where’s your friend?”

Second. There’s the whooshing sound of soft wings, then _Akaashi Keiji’s pet owl_ lands clumsily on the cobblestones with a strange noise.

And Bokuto sees why immediately. There’s blood dripping from one of its wings, a clump of feathers torn out and revealing a horrible gash. As graceful and smart as it is, it’s still an animal, so some idiot contestant must’ve made a swipe at it with their net or something and it probably couldn’t dodge in time. Bokuto wonders why it didn’t just fly away, but then realises with horror that it probably _couldn’t_ fly that far back before collapsing midway, either from blood loss or pain. Which would explain why it came to its friend, the little calico.

And third, Bokuto must’ve been leaning too heavily on his crutch, because there’s a brittle _snap._ The tip of the crutch crumples under his weight, and he goes crashing onto the floor, startling both the calico and the owl into jumping away from him. The slight movement makes more blood splatter onto the cobblestone.

“Ow,” he whines, pain shooting through his thigh and his right knee, where he’d braced most of the fall. “God. Stupid…”

“Hello? You good?” Someone sticks their head out from a shop window on one of the streets leading off. Bokuto’s head whips up in alarm, immediately shuffling so that he’s hiding cat and owl from plain sight.

“Yeah!” he shouts back as casually as possible, waving offhandedly, and watches the person go back into their shop. He can feel his heart in his throat as he twists around to see the animals safely in his shadow.

“Sorry,” he whispers, then pushes himself up. A roll of bandages has escaped the satchel around his waist, so he quickly tucks it back in. Glancing around furtively, he squats down — one-legged, his left leg stretched out to the back to stop the muscle from moving — and gathers up the bleeding owl in his arms as gently as possible before hopping speedily into the shadows of a nearby alleyway.

The owl stiffens in his arms, as if ready to flap off at moment’s notice, but Bokuto knows that it _can’t_. Not with one wing grazed like that.

A while back he’d bandaged a falcon that had fallen to the ground with a similar gash. He hopes he can remember vaguely how to do it. At least he’s not trying to splint a broken wing — he’s done that, before, but then the bird needed caring for at least a week, and he can’t do that with this one.

“You’re lucky it’s me,” Bokuto tells the owl quietly as he places it gently on a crate. It huddles in a trembling pile, injured wing awkwardly flipped out. “If it was someone else, that key around your neck would be long gone, while you’d be left in the street or something. I’m not gonna hurt you, please stay still…”

On and on Bokuto rambles, trying to get it to calm down enough for him to get closer to the wound.He brings out items from his satchel, naming each one as he places it in front of the owl; bandages, bandage tape, antibacterial lotion. He thanks Mika in his head for taking precautions and packing him a little satchel, _because, Bokuto-kun, I feel like you might need it even if you go out for a walk._ He doesn’t know how far away Akaashi Keiji lives. He hopes that it’ll be enough to for the owl to get home to him.

“…Just a bit more,” Bokuto whispers, taping gauze over the wound with shaking fingers. It’s such a delicate process, and the blue ribbon around its neck is a constant reminder that it’s not just some random old bird, this is the pet of the town’s most desired bachelor. The silver key occasionally shines out from beneath its chest plumage, but for most part it remains buried in the speckled cream feathers.

Given the immense _value_ of this particular bird, shouldn’t people be more careful with it? Or were they too blinded by infatuation to register that this was an actual individual living creature?

Bokuto tells it as such, anger barely simmering under the surface. The owl watches him with dark, intelligent eyes.

“If I had both my legs, I’d bring you back myself, but…” he gestures towards his crutches. “Too much moving around and I’ll tear it even more, Daishou says. Hope this is enough to get you home.”

Only now that he’s stood up with a hiss of pain does he realise that the knee he fell on had been scraped and stinging all along, even through the fabric of his trousers. “Oops,” he tells the owl with a laugh. “My turn, I guess.”

The owl gives him a little twitter, almost sounding reproachful, then stretches out its wing gingerly. It flaps once, twice, lifts into the air. A bit shaky, but it looks good to go.

The calico lets out a soft _myah?_

Bokuto hops to the mouth of the alleyway, looks around, and looks back to nod at the owl. All clear. Go now, before anyone sees you. Or before you tire out. 

He watches the owl fly away until it’s nothing more than a dark speck in the distance.

A feeling like an insect crawling along his skin along the front of his calf; Bokuto knows, from experience, that it’s really a trickle of blood making its way down his skin. There’s a soft pressure on his right leg, and he looks down to see the calico on its back legs, sniffing cautiously at the smell of fresh human blood. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, when the calico lets out another soft _myah?_ “It’s just a scrape, nothing like the giant boar gash here. Go after your friend.”

The calico goes to butt his head gently against his left leg, gives him one more backwards glance, then vanishes into the complexities of the village. 

Bokuto grabs his broken crutch, carefully tests out the other one, and begins his weary hop home.

-

It’s only when he’s about to drift off to sleep, wounds freshly cleaned and bandaged, does his eyes snap open and he realises that the owl’s blood on the cobblestones was _gone_ when he left the town square.

 _Probably just one of those sciency thingies,_ he reasons sleepily to himself. _The one that starts with an e. Evapor-something._

He falls asleep praying that the little owl had got home safely, and that his master was taking care of it. If he sees it in town square tomorrow, he’s going to be immensely disappointed with the way Akaashi Keiji is treating his supposedly beloved pet.

-

_“Shit.”_

_The gash is long. Shallow, but long, running along from his bicep down the crook of his elbow and stopping just two inches from the inside of his wrist._

_Red petals fill the air in angry bursts, landing in-between the dried out lavender leaves on the ground around their feet. One eye flares a violent orange, feline teeth revealed in a snarl. “Humans.”_

_“I was human once, too.” Bloodied bandages nearby, the remnants of soft gauze wrapped by careful, trembling fingers in the shadows of an alleyway. “But humanity evolves.”_

_“Yeah, fifty years ago, before you got yourself frozen in time. Well? You gonna do anything about it?”_

_Delicate fingers pull out a mangled brown feather from the gash with a soft hiss of pain. “No.”_

_A black tail flicks, irritated, but nothing more is said._

_-_

It’s a full week before the owl turns up again.

Bokuto doesn’t get to witness its glorious return, because he’s at Daishou’s getting his wound checked. Well, wounds plural.

“I’m just going to ignore your knee, because that happens all the time, you six-year-old child,” Daishou said pointedly when he’d entered the doors of the pharmacy.

Well, he had said that, but then he pulled down the bandages and inspected both wounds closely.

“It’s almost fully healed,” Daishou says with muted surprise. “The thigh, I mean. I’m impressed, Bokuto. Seems like you actually listened to me this time.”

“Hey hey, look here Mister Suguru, I always listen.” 

“It’s Doctor Daishou to you, heathen.”

Daishou pokes and probes at his thigh for a little while longer, muttering medical nonsense to himself under his breath, but eventually he leans back and scrutinises Bokuto with a narrow squint.

“How did you do it,” he says, almost suspicious, like he’s questioning a crime.

“Do what?” Bokuto doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he hopes that the smile on his face is innocent. 

Judging by the way Daishou crosses his arms, it’s not. “Have it heal so quickly,” he elaborates. “It’s been ten days since I basically cut decaying flesh out of your leg. The skin is healthy, no inflammation, nothing to indicate that a filthy tusk was buried in it. Like magic. How.”

“I changed bandages and everything like you said, doc. Even if the lotion stung like hell to start with.” Bokuto shrugs, the smug model of a good patient. “Although I did break your crutch by accident.”

“Yeah, I meant to ask about that too. How did that happen?”

“I was leaning too much on it and it snapped. It’s how I got this,” Bokuto gestures to his scraped knee. “So it’s basically your fault that I—”

“—Don’t even try, you brute. It’s _your_ fault for being so damn heavy.” Daishou scrubs his hands over his eyes, though his mouth twitches up into a grin. “Maybe getting a second wound was enough karma for the first one to heal so quickly.” 

“Didn’t think you believed in karma, Daishou.”

“Oh, I do. Just not in a wishy-washy way.” The bell at the front door rings, a light chime that indicates an entrance. Daishou perks up just a tiny fraction. “That must be Mika, she went out to take a look at the baker’s poor daughter.”

Sure enough, the sweet smell of fresh bread follows Mika into the room. “Hello boys,” she says brightly. “Guess what just happened!”

“The drunks hit on you and you punched them?” Daishou says. 

“The whole town knows you two are married, Mister Suguru,” Bokuto points out, and Daishou leans over to swat him.

Mika giggles, walking over to press a light kiss to Daishou’s cheek before announcing, “Akaashi Keiji’s pet owl made a reappearance today!” 

“No way!” Bokuto bolts upright. Then slumps back down again, fighting against the cascade of emotions inside him, trying to act casual. “Uh, I mean, where’d it go before?”

The doctors look at each other before turning back to Bokuto with raised eyebrows.

“Say, Bokuto,” Daishou begins, leaning forward with a wicked grin. “Are you in for the booty, or _the booty_?”

“Neither,” Bokuto says firmly, but heat creeps up his neck before he can hammer it down.

“You can’t be in it too seriously,” Mika says. “You probably know, like, a hundred ways how to capture a bird without hurting it. Unlike those idiots in the square.”

“Thank you!” Bokuto puffs up at the praise, then, “Wait, no! I’m not in it, I’m not in for anything, I swear!” 

Daishou smirks like he knows all of Bokuto’s secrets. He _doesn’t._ “Then explain your reaction?” 

Just as he’s about to say “I wrapped up its wing a week ago when some asshole hurt it real bad”, his brain catches up with his mouth (for once) and realises that he can’t possibly tell two of the most well-connected people in town that he had been _so_ close to the prize, but _didn’t take it._ The crowd would have his head.

“I saw it got injured last time it was here,” he says instead. “If not for my leg I would’ve gotten the asshole who did it.”

That’s a lie, obviously. But if he could find that asshole, he would.

“He’s not lying,” Mika says, and Bokuto feels a wave of relief wash over him. “I definitely heard some people wondering about a new scar on one of its wings. It’s not that visible, since there’s feathers over it, but you can just see it if it comes close enough.”

Daishou clicks his tongue over his teeth. “Bunch of morons,” he mutters. “Treating an animal like an object. Mind you, I think that Akaashi Keiji should be held responsible for the damage done to the poor owl, too.”

Bokuto misses the rest of the conversation, because his mind is suddenly full of images of the little brown owl. It was a rufous-legged owl, he’d confirmed his suspicions when bandaging it. A true beauty, too, smooth feathers and speckled markings and odd tufts of feathers around its head. Rufous-legged owls usually had round heads without tufts, but it wasn’t like having tufts was a genetic anomaly. He remembers the way it swooped and dived, the elegance with which it soared through the crowd and into the light of the sun, almost as if it was laughing at the crowd’s pathetic attempts. He remembers those dark, intelligent eyes, the intensity of its gaze, the _trust_ that Bokuto wouldn’t suddenly yell “SIKE!” and snatch the key off its neck or stab it or something.

Animals really do understand. Too bad Bokuto has no way of telling the world.

-

The next day, Bokuto goes to watch the ceremony again, just to see the owl back in action. And also to see who the hell is holding dangerous instruments and maybe beat the shit out of them before they can do any more damage.

Konoha tags along, this time. On the way to the town square, Konoha complains about the royal commission, the same one Shirofuku was doing, for the wedding, the crown prince was so picky with his colours, all white and teal, did he even know how hard it was to make teal dye.

“Probably not,” Bokuto tells him when he pauses to take a breath. “He’s the prince, dude. By the way, what happened to you guys wanting to participate in the thing?” 

“What thing?”

“You know, the whole thing we’re about to see.” 

“Oh, _that._ ” Konoha shrugs. “We’re just so busy, man. The stupid commission is taking so much time. Not to mention we had to take care of your busted ass—”

“I can take care of my busted ass myself, thanks,” Bokuto interjects. “Don’t use me as an excuse.”

“Yes, because demanding meals in bed is totally self-care.”

“Okay so maybe I was in a bad mood at home the first couple days. I’m a hunter, I hunt, that’s what I do!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Their pace slows as they approach town square, Bokuto leading them towards his usual perch on the fountain. “No, but seriously. Think about it. We don’t want the guy, nor do we need the money, so there’s no point in joining just for the sake of it, right?” 

“Yeah, that’s true.” Bokuto waves a hand at the gathering crowd. “Plus. There’s tons of people for him to choose from already.”

“Exactly.”

-

Bokuto won’t admit it, but he’s a little bit disappointed that there was no recognition from the newly-healed owl.

At least the two cats appeared again — the calico, and also the mangy black one — and were _very_ enthusiastic, flopping onto their backs and giving him slow blinks. The black cat butts its head so hard against Bokuto’s leg, it feels like a light punch. Konoha watches them, bemused.

“You got new friends, huh,” he comments, though he makes no move to pet them, held back by a childhood trauma where the family cat pounced on his face.

Bokuto grins and tells himself to be content with the company of two cats.

-

“You know what, I should name you two,” Bokuto says a few days later. It’s been yet another unsuccessful day for the vying mob, and Bokuto can tell they’re starting to get hot-headed. Of course, none of this affects him, a mere bystander on the edge of the crowd. “Since we’re friends now! I’m not very good with names, but I will, anyway.”

He stares at the black cat — tomcat, actually, they’re both males, or at least Bokuto _thinks_ the calico is a male — and tries to come up with a more creative name than something like “Lucky”. Black tail swishing through the air, mouth pulled in a permanent smirk; a thought forms in Bokuto’s mind. “Kuroo,” he decides. “Black tail. Because your tail’s always moving around.”

The cat — now Kuroo — gives him a neutral-sounding meow.

“Kuroo it is, then. And what about you…?”

The calico blinks at him. 

“How about Kenma? No reason, it just popped into my head.” 

The calico blinks again, then looks away and curls up to take a nap.

“Okay, Kenma.” A smile spreads across his face before he even notices. “Two strays, Kuroo and Kenma! Hell yeah!”

Kuroo meows again, and looks to the sky expectantly. Bokuto pays him no attention.

“I can finally go back out to the woods tomorrow, guys,” he says happily. “Finally gotta get Daishou some game and start repaying my debt! Can’t wait to get back out there.”

Kuroo meows _again_ , more insistently, still looking at the sky, so Bokuto follows his gaze. “What is — wha??!”

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but it’s not…this.

Akaashi Keiji’s pet owl releases a high-pitched hoot, flaps air into his face, and drops a sprig of lavender onto his lap. 

“Wha—” Bokuto starts, then bolts upright. His eyes dart around nervously before sprinting into the shadow of the alleyway, lavender clutched tightly in his palm.

The cats look at each other like, _what the hell?_ before lazily stretching and plodding after him.

The owl is gone.

“What!” Bokuto yelps out. The cats stare at him. “That wasn’t a hallucination, right? You guys saw that, right? Right!”

Kuroo looks unimpressed, pawing instead at the crumpled plant in Bokuto’s hand.

There’s a very thin roll of frail paper wrapped around the stem. Spiky writing, blotted in places, but Bokuto’s eyes grow wide, instantly understanding.

_Thank you._

Well, at least Akaashi Keiji had decent manners.

_-_

He sticks the lavender in a jam jar filled with water, the note flattened under it, and places it on his bedside table.

It smells nice.

-

_“Coward.”_

_“I thanked him as properly as I could, Tetsurou.”_

-

As Bokuto returns to his hunting routine, he doesn’t get to watch the thing quite as often.

(What the hell is it called, anyway? Courting ceremony? Game of catch? May the odds ever be in your favour?) 

Sometimes he sees the cats in the forest. He wonders what their lives are like, occasionally meandering up to town, cozying up to the market fishmonger for extra treats. (He’s seen them at it, turning up the charm, little bastards.) He wonders how exactly they befriended an owl of such high status. Maybe they were even friends with Akaashi Keiji himself. That would be weird.

Sometimes the cats see him and they come up to him, sniffing at his bag, or his weapons, or just circling him and being…cats.

Bokuto can’t help but wonder, perched high on a treetop one lunchtime, where the hell Akaashi Keiji lives. 

He’s been in the forest his entire life. He’s walked through it, been chased through it, mapped it crudely in a sketchbook. And he has never, ever seen a single sign of human life. Except for that one time when he was like, 6, and found a puddle of pee on one of the trees, got overexcited and tried to track the animal that made it, only to follow the prints and realise that it was his own from like 10 minutes ago. So it didn’t really count. 

Anyway, didn’t he only start to show up at the village last winter? Didn’t people think he was a travelling suitor for Prince Oikawa at the time, dressed in all those furs? But no, he’d gone into the town hall then left after an hour, and started showing up in monthly intervals in the village?

Maybe he was just some weird hermit who hid himself very, very well.

Bokuto shoots down another deer, gives it a quick merciful death; one hard slice with his hunting knife all the way across the jugular into the neck bone. After skinning the pelt and carving off as much meat as he can carry, he digs out the heart and buries it into the soil with a muttered prayer, laying a nearby petal on top of the mound. 

Then he hightails it out of there before the hyenas get too impatient. They’re always lurking around after he’s done a kill.

On the way up to the butcher’s, he meets Komi, who’s sauntering up with a cageful of rambunctious ducks. “Heya,” he says, poking the bag on Bokuto’s back. “So how much have you contributed today?”

“This is my fourth kill today, so…around 300 pounds, I guess?”

Komi whistles.

He’s not the best hunter of the town for nothing. Bokuto had the uncanny ability to pick out the fattest, healthiest animal of the herd, no matter how far away he was watching from. Shooting it down with such minimal damage and powerful accuracy that it would fall with one hit.

Other older hunters used to scoff at him, saying he was too soft to be a proper hunter, would probably end up frolicking with the prey instead of preying on them. And then, oops, maybe one day they’d shoot him “by mistake”.

They shut up when Bokuto — still a teenager at the time — dragged out a magnificent young stag by its horns, the only signs of damage being an arrow halfway through its eye and his now signature straight slice down the jugular. That one kill provided enough meat for twenty-nine families at once. The look in his eyes was described as _feral._

He’s been hailed as the best hunter ever since.

Bokuto wonders, idly, if someone like Akaashi Keiji would end up with one of the hunters in the village. Maybe even one of the idiots who would probably shoot his owl for fun.

The thought alone makes his blood _boil._

_-_

It’s been a month since he received the lavender and the pretty note when Washio comes home one day with a face even graver than usual.

He puts away newly purchased bread, jam, fruit. Shirofuku asks _what’s wrong, where did you go?_ and Washio answers gruffly, “Just the market.” 

He fixes Bokuto with a hard stare, then jerks his thumb in the direction of his room. 

“What?” Bokuto asks immediately before the door’s even locked properly. “What happened? Is it bad? Someone in trouble?” 

“Someone in trouble, yes.” Washio even pulls the curtains closed, but they’re moth-bitten and worn with age, so some light comes through anyway. “The vagrants, they’re tired of the game.”

Bokuto doesn’t understand.

“They want money,” Washio clarifies. “They’re sick of the owl. They plan on going into the woods. Tonight.” 

The owl. The woods. Money.

They’re going to find Akaashi — who lives alone in the woods, who hides in the woods, who is _vulnerable_ in the woods — and only the gods know what they’ll do when they find him.

Bokuto’s not even part of the game. He shouldn’t have concern for either the property or the person. Yet his fists clench together at his sides until he’s pacing the room up and down, shaking with anger and the urge to _do something, help him, protect him_. 

Them, actually. The pet owl is the only one he really has a connection with anyway.

Their interactions hadn’t ended with the thank-you note. The owl had actually circled back briefly on the rare opportunities Bokuto had been able to watch the event, long after everyone else had left; cuffing his hair with its scarred wing, or even perching on the same crate it had been bandaged on and nipping his fingers dismissively if they came anywhere close to it, as if to say _you’re alright, I guess, I’m grateful so I’ll tolerate you_. Usually the cats were there too, battling for attention. Kuroo, in particular, loved to jump up and hiss at the owl, similar to the first time Bokuto had seen them at play.

So many times Bokuto could’ve been able to take the key, but he didn’t. He just laughed and cooed at the cuteness of the downy little owl, the aloof way it showed its affection. Because someone so wildly chased after probably deserved someone better anyway — someone for him to really love, not some dumbass who just happened to know how to bandage birds. 

And now these fuckups were planning on _attacking_ him?

“Wait.” Bokuto stops in the midst of his angry cloud, hitting a point of confusion. “Why are you telling me? Why are you expecting me to do something, you know I’m not in the game, right?”

“I saw you bandaging the owl,” Washio says bluntly. Bokuto blanches in shock. “I was just coming out of the council hall. You were too careless in broad daylight. But you got lucky.”

Bokuto’s jaw drops open. “You…but…Washio!!!” he splutters out. “Tell me these things sooner!”

“Notice them yourself. Aren’t you meant to have excellent senses, best hunter?”

“Agh! Okay, fine! I got careless! I was so scared and focused, man, sorry for being not as alert as you expected me to be!”

Washio sighs. “Doesn’t matter,” he says gruffly. “Are you planning on helping, or not? Because otherwise I can technically alert authorities on suspicions of planned burglary.”

“Noooo.” Bokuto stops in his pacing, eyes narrowed. “I wanna take care of it. So give me names.”

“I can’t. You’d be arrested for assault and injury for no reason. Can’t prove what they’re planning to do, not now.”

“Then how do you want me to help?”

Washio levels him with a firm stare. “Go and warn Akaashi Keiji. Before it’s too late.”

Despite his brimming energy, Bokuto hems and haws for a bit longer, saying _but I’ve been in there thousands of times, never seen a house in the woods before_ and _I don’t even know what he looks like!_ and _why me, why me. I didn’t even want any part in the game._

When he’s finished with his excuses, Washio puts a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve befriended the pet of the town’s most coveted man,” he tells him. “It cannot be a coincidence. No one knows the woods the way you do.” 

Washio says, “You’re the only one who can help him now.”

Bokuto squares his shoulders, golden eyes steady with determination. “Okay.”

-

Well, saying all that was super cool and commendable, but when it came to the actual doing, Bokuto had serious second thoughts. 

It’s almost sunset, and he’s been here almost three hours. Which is great, because he loves the woods, but Bokuto prefers to spend nighttimes at _home,_ in town, with his friends. Nighttime is when the wolves come out in packs, looking for sleeping prey and remains. Nighttime is danger time.

He cuts through his usual path deep into the woods, though he knows that if he really has to find the mysterious hermit cave, he’s gonna have to go way off-track. There’s enough supplies in his pack for three days; he’s holding out on the possibility that those jackasses are gonna get even more lost than he might, in which case maybe he can just make a quick job of them if they happen to cross paths. He’s got three different hunting knives in his belt, and even more weaponry in his pack.

Merely an occupational hazard, of course.

Washio said that waiting in ambush at the mouth of the forest was illegal, but nothing about ambush _in_ the forest, so Bokuto’s just hoping for the best at this point.

To be honest, he’s scared. Scared of the desperate vandals, scared of what might happen, scared of Akaashi Keiji himself. Would he expect Bokuto to be a fan? Maybe he was a giant snob, pretty people generally were. What if Bokuto ends up wanting to save the owl and the owl alone? 

That would be kinda bad. And also probably go against a bunch of moral ethics.

The sounds of the forest don’t usually distract his spiralling thoughts, but this particular one does. A familiar _mrr-rr-roww!_ rings through his surroundings; first Kenma, slinking up his left side, then Kuroo emerges from the darkness. The pull of his mouth looks even more ominous in the fading light.

“Hey hey hey,” he greets softly, crouching down as they circle around him with raised tails. “Nice to see you guys.”

Kuroo butts his mangy head against Bokuto’s thigh, then walks away again, Kenma following close behind. They look back at Bokuto expectantly.

Animals really do understand.

“You know why I’m here,” Bokuto says slowly. “You want to lead me to him?”

Kuroo flicks his tail once, _duh,_ and vanishes into the undergrowth. 

Kenma gives him a soft _myah_ and follows quickly after the confident black cat.

Bokuto casts one last glance at the familiar trail, and follows after them.

-

It’s dark enough that Bokuto has had to make a torch, small flames flickering against tree trunks and casting great big shadows. And it is with the torch that he sees a human figure moving in the distance.

The cats make no sound, of course, but neither does Bokuto — he knows well enough to stay silent on the hunt. So he’s a mere few feet away from the figure before both he and the person come to a dead halt.

The fire casts an orangey glow, but it’s enough for him to tell that the person is not wearing typical village garments. A hooded turquoise-y cloak, threaded through with silver. Dark curly hair. A tall, slender frame.

The cats stop walking and stare at Bokuto, as if to say, _well? What next?_

Bokuto’s mouth is more than a little bit dry, but he blurts out, “Hey, are you Akaashi Keiji?”

Kuroo is batting at the hem of the cloak. Something shifts in the atmosphere, subtle and quiet. Waiting. 

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi Keiji finally says. His voice is soft, as if trying not to disturb something. Bokuto feels both calm and wildly on edge at once. “You shouldn’t be able to find me. 

Bokuto thinks he gives Kuroo a small kick, but it’s too dark and he can’t really see and he can’t hear anything over his own heartbeat and his voice and also why would he do that to the poor cat who was friends with his owl? “So it IS you!” Bokuto takes another step forward. “Hey, how do you know my name?”

“I know every person in the village,” Akaashi says. He turns around, and holy shit. 

He really is super gorgeous. 

…Like, it’s kinda unfair how gorgeous he is.

No wonder more than half the town had jumped at the chance to become his partner.

Meanwhile Bokuto thinks there’s mud on his face and twigs in his hair and he kind of wants to hide in his shirt. Akaashi stares at him for the briefest of moments before lowering his gaze. “It is very late and unsafe here. I suggest you leave.”

“No thanks,” Bokuto says adamantly. “Nothing can hurt me here, I’ve only been bitten by snakes like four times. Which reminds me, there are people coming to hurt you, really bad people who want your money, Washio heard ‘em talking in the market so I came to warn you, just in case—”

“There is nothing for them to steal,” Akaashi interrupts. He speaks carefully, like every other word holds some kind of secret. Kuroo has one of his claws tangled in the hem of his robe; Kenma sits attentively at his bare feet, ears turned outward, tail curled around its white body. Akaashi ignores them both. “And please, Bokuto-san, there is no need to trouble yourself about my safety.”

In the firelight of Bokuto’s torch, his blue eyes almost glow with their own luminescence under his lashes, flickering like jewels, shadows cast over his face like a marble sculpture.

“But they’re really bad people,” Bokuto repeats, his mouth filled with sand. “I want to help.”

Akaashi does not respond. Moments tick by. Eternities pass

Kuroo manages to yank his claw out with a soft hiss. 

“Alright,” Akaashi finally says, casting his gaze to the dark sky, and Bokuto nearly drops his torch. When he turns around wordlessly with a soft swish of his cloak, Bokuto notices with a start that the cats are gone.

Akaashi glides forward without a sound, and Bokuto hurries after him.

Two figures step out into the fading light behind them. Their shadows have faint, flicking tails.

-

“Uh, Akaashi,” Bokuto whispers. “I don’t wanna be rude, but Washio told me that this was illegal.”

Akaashi doesn’t even spare him a glance. “The laws of your town don’t apply to me.”

Bokuto shifts uncomfortably, peeking behind the fir trunk towards the main road. They’re standing behind the two big firs at the mouth of the forest — precisely what Bokuto had initially planned. “Right, yeah, of course, but they apply to _me._ Besides, how do you know they’re not already in there looking for you?”

“They aren’t in there.” Akaashi looks at him this time, a piercing expression that sends goosebumps erupting along Bokuto’s arms, makes him shiver in his heavy jacket. “Call it sixth sense. I just know.” 

Bokuto stares at the ground, the worried crease in his brow growing ever deeper. Eventually Akaashi sighs.

“Bokuto-san, I will be honest with you. Regardless of the law, we will be more advantageous if they can be lured out of the trees; preferably the lavender meadow neighbouring these woods. The ground is open, but there are patches of thick grass that are tall enough for hiding in.” 

“I know, woods dangerous at night and stuff, because there’s no light and too many hidey-holes, right?” Bokuto looks up; the sky is clear tonight, stars and galaxies shining in all their glamour, but it’s all lost in the intricacies of the woods. “Not to mention the animals. But Akaashi, the woods is my confident place.”

“And the meadow there is mine.” Akaashi holds his stare. “And I am the one being hunted.” 

They’re at a standstill for what feels like hours, but in the end, Bokuto relents.

“Alright, we’ll do it your way,” he says reluctantly. Not having any cover sounds incredibly risky, but — Akaashi is right, he is the one being hunted, and Bokuto’s just butting in, he should be listening to Akaashi. “But, but what if, well I really don’t think they will because even _I’ve_ never seen it, but — what if they find your house? They’re the type to just…kill for fun.”

Yes, he’s worried about the pet owl. So sue him. 

Akaashi, however, has no such worries. “They won’t find it. I’m very sure of that. Now listen, I have a plan…”

-

Around midnight, the vagrants show up on the main road, in view of the woods.

“Easy peasy,” their leader is saying. “We kidnap that pretentious schmuck, force him to bring us to his home, take allll his money. I’ve had enough of that fucking owl, so if we find it, I get the first stab. As for what to do with the guy…” He sniggers, and the group follows with similar sinister chuckles. “Well, it’s all up to us, innit?” 

One of them wolf whistles; the group lets out a bark of laughter. They may have had too much to drink beforehand, the six of them, full of liquid courage to rob and attack the village’s most wanted man. They dream about the gold and jewels, how they could just make off to the next village up north with their new fortunes, start a new life miles away from their current miserable state. Have their fun with him, then sell the boy, a pretty penny for a pretty face. No one would miss them, nor him, the recluse who hid in the woods. A delectable future.

Suddenly, their leader holds a hand up and hunkers down, pointing silently to the mouth of the woods, where someone cloaked in blue had just walked out. 

“Oh boy oh boy,” someone mutters gleefully. “Will the Lady Luck smile upon us, it’s the man himself.”

Akaashi Keiji walks quietly along the woodland boundary, seemingly unaware of his upcoming fate. Even from this distance, they can see heaps of coins popping up in the air; just from his velvet cloak, his silver brooch, _him._

“Hold,” their leader whispers. “Let’s tail him for a little bit. Maybe he’ll lead us straight there.”

So they do, a shambling pile of men, following their straight-backed target.

They reach the lavender field. The grass is higher here, and louder, but the night is windy and noise is less detectable.

“The jackass is just taking a leisurely starlit walk,” one of them snarls quietly, fidgety with their blunt weapon. “Can’t we just do him in?”

Their leader gives him a warning glance, then raises his hand, balled in a fist. “We’ll jump him on the count of three. Watch my signal—”

“He stopped,” someone else hisses out, and they all turn their eyes towards Akaashi Keiji, his cloak fluttering in the wind, arms raised to the sides like he’s stretching.

Or like he’s about to take flight.

_Ridiculous._

Their leader raises one finger. A second finger. The group tenses, and —&

“Hello, gentlemen.” 

The vagrants freeze at the sound of Akaashi Keiji’s voice, calm and clear over the howling of the wind and the lavender grasses. 

He turns around — the vagrants stiffen, their cover _blown_ , was there anything else to do but to jump him _now_ — and gives them a small, ferocious smile, head tilted eerily to the side.

“Or should I say, _absolute fucking morons._ ”

One of the vagrants in the back of the group lets out a bloodcurdling _scream,_ and the last thing the entire group sees is—

Golden eyes with slits for pupils.

Glinting silver knives.

And the looming, savage shadow of a natural hunter swooping down on easy prey.

-

“Don’t worry, Bokuto-san. We can just leave them to nature; I will dispose of the remaining items. You’ve done more than enough for me.”

Bokuto stares at the bodies, breathing hard, _terrified_.

He hasn’t killed so brutally, so eagerly, since he needed to prove his worth with the stag.

His knives drop onto the ground, into the blood-soaked soil. His lips tremble.

“Oh my god I fucked up,” he whispers. He wants so desperately to lick his lips, but he can’t, because if he did he might taste the _fucking blood_. “I dunno if this field is town territory, no one’s gonna miss them, they got it coming to them really they would drink and assault people in town but _I dunno if this is town territory I’m gonna oh my god—”_

A gentle hand cups the side of his face, shocking him into silence; tears break from his eyes, quiet rivulets down his cheeks, and Akaashi looks him up and down, impassive as ever. His thumb brushes the teardrops, smudges the blood on his face. Bokuto leans into the touch like a frightened wild animal.

“Shh,” Akaashi whispers back. His eyes reflect the galaxies above them, distant, _beautiful_. “Calm down, Bokuto-san.”

Akaashi traces his hand, gently gently _gently_ , over the red spatters on his face. Wiping his cheeks, his lips, his ears. His other hand reaches for Bokuto’s own bloody one, spindly fingers twined with his own thick ones.

He simply _looks_ at him, steadfast and unwavering.

Bokuto doesn’t realise he’s shaking until he stops. 

“It’s all over you,” Akaashi murmurs. His hand leaves Bokuto’s face, goes to nudge open his already half-unbuttoned shirt. Compared to Bokuto, bloodstained and feral, Akaashi is absolutely pristine. White blouse tucked into tight black trousers. The delicate blue ribbon around his neck like a choker, a silver key lying on the hollow of his collarbones. But the hem of his cloak has soaked up traces of blood, his bare feet even more bloodstained than Bokuto’s boots as they sink into the reddened soil, and his hands have newly acquired the sticky redness as he holds Bokuto, ghosts his fingers over the splatters on his chest and neck.

Bokuto lets out a big gasping breath, the dark metallic tang shooting through his nose. Akaashi’s eyes flicker up to meet his.

“Come,” Akaashi says, with a gentle pull of their interlinked hands; Bokuto stumbles along, still numb. “We’ll collect your belongings, then let us go to the river. You can’t possibly go back to the village looking like this.”

They leave a trail of red prints behind them.

-

Bokuto leans against a weeping willow in nothing but his underwear and socks, draped in his long jacket and sitting on its tail. Watches Akaashi scrub the blood out of his garments. His leather boots are standing in the river, red coming off it in wisps. He hugs his knees to his chest, still mildly sticky.

There’s a drying handprint on Akaashi’s shirt. When they had reached the river, Akaashi had released his hand and instructed him to strip. After pulling his shirt over his head, Bokuto had looked back up to see Akaashi gazing at his now bloodstained hand.

He caught Bokuto’s gaze and slowly pressed his hand into his chest, leaving a red handprint on the clean fabric there and letting his hand drop down to his side. “Now we match,” he’d said, a mirthful quirk to his mouth. “A brand of protection, if you will.”

Now, Akaashi drags his wrist across his forehead with a soft exhale, his hands dripping with water. His sleeves are soaking wet, clinging to the lean muscles in his arms as they ripple fluidly under the moonlight. Bokuto starts and half rises up. “Akaashi, they’re mine, I can—”

“Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says firmly, with a quelling glare. “This blood was spilled for me. I will take care of it. Sit down.”

So Bokuto sits, wordless, and watches clouds of red float out of his clothes and dissipate into the river.

-

Bokuto doesn’t know when he dozes off, slumped to the ground in exhaustion, but he comes to with the sun in his eyes. Sometime while he was asleep, the blood was rinsed and more thoroughly wiped off of his skin. His shirt is dry and folded under his head, jacket half tucked under him, half draped over him like a blanket. The rest of his belongings —sans the two hunting knives he dropped in the meadow — are in a neat pile nearby. Rather than the metallic tang of blood, he smells faintly of lavender.

Akaashi is nowhere to be seen, no track or anything that might indicate his whereabouts. Bokuto can’t find the trail of footprints that indicates where they came here from, but that’s okay. He knows vaguely what the direction is. And he has no desire to go back to the meadow, anyway.

He dresses himself, shoulders his pack, and begins his trek home.

-

_Have you heard?_ comes the rumours, a few days later. _Did you know? Those fucking tramps, those good-for-nothings who hang around our streets shouting obscenities, they tried to rob Akaashi Keiji, and he killed them all? Did you know, they found their bodies, mutilated and rotting in the lavender field?_

“Never thought he’d be that cold-blooded,” Komi comments, surprised.

“Well, if you live out there alone, you’d expect a certain level of that,” Konoha remarks. 

“I don’t blame him, those guys were pieces of shit,” Sarukui mutters.

“I would’ve done the same if I could,” Shirofuku shudders. “They won’t be missed.” 

Washio looks at Bokuto, silent, and they say nothing.

(“Did you do it?” Washio asks him, afterwards.

Bokuto touches his face, his chest, and his silence is enough of his answer.)

-

_“That Bokuto is super strong, huh?” Fingers run appreciatively over the edge of the knives, blunted by sheer trauma and force. “Nice job he did, I’m pretty impressed.”_

_“Yes.”_

_The bloodied hem of a cloak sweeps across the floor, lavender petals swirling in its wake._

_“Did that cement your decision?”_

_Spindly fingers, folded together._

_“Possibly,” Akaashi Keiji allows._

_“Even if you were in love, you wouldn’t tell me, right?”_

_“Probably.”_

_A disgruntled “tch”, though black ears flick playfully. “Jackass. And you kicked me for helping out.”_

_“Kuro,” comes the soft sigh, blond curtains over a pale face. “Shut up.”_

-

It feels wrong to admit it, but Bokuto doesn’t feel as much guilt as he thought he would.

In fact he barely feels _any_.

All around town, he hears whispers. The marketplace, the library, the town hall. _Good riddance_ and _finally_ and _he’s done us a solid, really._ Everyone goes about their business as usual. The girls walk with an extra spring in their step, now that their potential harassers are dead and gone. 

“The guy’s off his rocker, dude,” Daishou says, when Bokuto goes to have lunch with him one day. “I had to go identify those tramps with the coroner. All sliced into tiny little pieces, a limb here, a head there, half-eaten by vultures. Incredible precision. The undertaker had to pick bits up with tongs and stuff. By the looks of him, you would’ve thought he was a delicate guy…But all the evidence showed they planned to do him harm, so.” He shrugs. “Good for him, I guess.”

Bokuto wonders if the reactions would be any different if they knew that _he_ was the one who did it. Would he still be hailed as a hero? Or a murderer? Could he argue the case as vigilante justice? 

At night, he startles awake, faint screams echoing in his head —but at the same time, softly and ever insistent, _shh, calm down, Bokuto-san_. Phantom touches along where evidence had been washed off. The edge of the old thank-you note flutters under the glass jar.

When Akaashi’s pet owl lands on the spire once more, under the blazing midday sun, the crowd seems more reverent. Bokuto scratches Kuroo’s mangy black ears, watching apprehensively from the fountain with Kenma curled around his feet.

The owl tilts its head at the people under it.

A series of whispering breaks out, then suddenly a young girl is shoved out, holding an envelope. “We don’t know how much you understand, but you’re probably quite smart,” she blurts out, neck craned to look at the owl on the spire. “This is a letter from - us. A lot of us. For your master.” 

“It’s unrelated to the game,” someone else adds. “We just want to thank him. For killing those guys.”

“They were abusive shitheads,” a man says gruffly.

“Alcoholics.”

“Druggies.”

“Horrid sex-driven creeps.” 

The crowd shudders as one. The girl stretches out her arm as far as she can, holding out the envelope.

“This isn’t a trap or nuthin’,” she says earnestly. “Please just take it back to him. And we’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.” 

The owl hesitates, then drops down nimbly, taking the letter in its beak. It gives them one last look, then flaps off towards the woods.

The crowd watches it fly off, as does Bokuto, his hand resting on Kuroo’s back.

Bokuto stares down at black shiny fur and pets him with intensity — an attempt to convey a non-verbal thank you. 

_For leading the way._

Kuroo yawns and readjusts his position, blind to the world around him.

-

Things…go back to normal after that. 

The group of players seemed to have gotten gentler after the incident. Perhaps they’d finally come to the realisation that the owl was an actual fucking life to its own right, or perhaps they’d been cowed by Akaashi Keiji’s apparent power, more reluctant to be rough less he destroyed them.

It’s probably also due to the incident, but the owl gets a _lot_ more affectionate. Bokuto’s been staying out of hunting under the excuse of having to forge new hunting knives (well it wasn’t really an excuse because he had a shit ton of other weapons but no one could make him do anything if he didn’t want to and he did _not_ want to go back out there, not so soon, not yet), so he’s watching the game — while helping around at home, of course. Errands to get more thread for Shirofuku, sequins for Konoha, sharpens Sarukui’s fabric scissors, helps prepare meals and clean the house.

But he goes home later and later each day because the owl would swoop back, without anyone noticing, and they would spend three to five sweet minutes in the alleyway together. “You’re so cute,” he’d whispered to it once, as it was nibbling on a dead cricket that Bokuto had found on the way to the town square. It had stopped eating, looked up with its big dark eyes. Bokuto had grinned despite himself, reaching out to stroke down its beak while rambling on. “So smart, little guy. Pretty owl… hey, did you know, your master’s absolutely terrifying and it’s super hot?” 

The owl had let out a soft, pleased twittering sound, leaning towards him.

Bokuto had made sure to lay the praise on thick after that, just because he could.

So maybe Akaashi Keiji was actually super cool and Bokuto kind of liked him a lot. Big deal. 

Kuroo seemed annoyed at the lack of attention that he was receiving, as he had almost gotten into a fight with the owl several times. Usually before it escalated Kenma would plant itself in between them, flopping to the ground with a tired look. If the calico wasn’t there, sometimes Bokuto had to intervene.

Bokuto tries to be more careful during these little rendezvous after what Washio had told him, but what he can’t account for what the animals do, and one day they get a little bit too careless.

It had been yet another day where tensions had escalated between cat and owl; Kuroo had actually managed to get a hit in, cuffing it lightly round the head, before Bokuto had yanked him away by the midriff, trying not to giggle. And his claw must’ve caught in the thread or something, because when Bokuto watches the owl fly out of sight and turns back to the cat, there’s something glinting on the cobblestones. 

Bokuto looks at it curiously, silver key and torn blue ribbon, so small and delicate that it could’ve been for a dollhouse.

Kuroo chirps and looks at Bokuto meaningfully.

“Bad kitty,” Bokuto scolds lightly, scooping up the key and dangling it in front of Kuroo, who bats at it half-heartedly. “Did you decide to join the game, huh? You gonna woo Akaashi now?”

The cat makes a face that is distinctly unlike any face that Bokuto has ever seen in his life. It’s an extreme sort of disgust, so disgruntled and horrified that the mangy black cat almost looks human. 

“You’re just a cat, silly.” Bokuto tucks the key into his shirt. It’s warm out today, and he’d foregone his heavy jacket for a thin vest, barely fastened by a golden pin that he’d borrowed from Konoha. He sighs. “I need to return this to him before anyone finds out…”

Kuroo flops on his back with a lazy yawn, and Bokuto prods him with the toe of his boot. “You’re coming with me,” he says firmly. “This is your fault, so you’re gonna lead the way. Again.”

He swears that Kuroo rolls his fucking eyes as if to say _god, just get on with it_.

-

Kenma is curled up in the shade of one of the firs when they arrive at the mouth of the woods.

Kuroo ambles up with a loud meow, like a summons, _Kenma, Kenma!_ and Kenma blinks awake, wide lamplike eyes before trotting into the wilderness.

With the key still tucked safely in his shirt, two cats and a human walk into the woods.

Bokuto has been in the woods many, many times. Too many times. For hunting, for fishing, just to clear his head…it’s a nice refuge. He remembers climbing up one of the trees and spooking a sleeping sparrow family as a child, but not much of what happened after that because he’d fallen out of the tree in shock. 

These are not his woods.

It looks different, today, somehow. The light is brighter through the leaves, almost white, but not harsh. The flowers seem to bend his way. The cats are ahead of him, occasionally looking back, batting at passing glittery insects with their tails held jauntily in the air. Even Kenma, lethargic little Kenma, amber eyes glinting at the quick bugs, giving Kuroo little licks that only make his hair stick up even more. There’s no telltale sound or track of other animals, just the occasional chirp and the soft rustling of wind through leaves.

Bokuto thinks that he doesn’t recognise this part of the forest, which is _ridiculous_ , because he is the best hunter in the area and knows it like the back of his hand. Occupational habit. The key is cold against his shirt, stealing warmth from his skin as he follows the cats, heart in his throat, nervous for absolutely no reason.

There can’t just suddenly be a new patch of woodland. That’s ridiculous. There just can’t be.

The greenery suddenly, impossibly, stops.

At the edge of a small clearing with a neat cottage in the middle, straw-thatched roof and wooden fence.

There’s mushrooms at his feet, dotted around the circle of the the clearing. Bokuto is _very_ aware of these mushrooms, knows that they’re poisonous, thinks it looks like a barrier. He knows that this is, probably, a faerie ring, that mortals aren’t meant to trespass unless they want to meet terrible fates. And he doesn’t want a terrible fate, thank you very much; he still loves his friends and his home and the wild thrill of running through the woods. He still wants to pet the cats, befriend the owl even more, watch them play with subtle, complex emotions.

The cats are in the circle, looking expectantly at him. Kuroo lifts a paw lazily and licks it, grooming himself without a care; Kenma settles on the ground and blinks slowly at him. Their tails curl casually around their bodies.

_They’re safe, so…I should be, right?_

Bokuto steps into the ring and squeezes his eyes shut at the sudden, overwhelming dizziness that shoots through his brain.

-

_“…That interfering jackass of a cat sprite.”_

-

When he opens his eyes, peeking tentatively through his fingers, the cats are gone.

Panic rips through Bokuto for a brief moment and he whirls around, prepared to charge back through the dizziness and leave whatever the _hell_ he’d stepped into —

Then he realises that he _can’t_.

There’s a…barrier, separating him from the rest of the woods. It’s like the air decided to solidify in front of him. All his banging on the barrier makes no difference; there’s no sound, no ripples, no nothing. A cat — this one a plain brown tabby, not Kuroo, not Kenma — walks past, inches in front of him, yet it shows no reaction to Bokuto at all.

Bokuto realises, with no small amount of horror, that whatever this barrier was, it separated him from the normal world. Movement and sound, everything he could sense was contained within the barrier and in the barrier alone.

The air in here is purer, stronger than he thought. Short gasps of oxygen shoot through his lungs, muscles watery and unsteady. Bokuto vaguely remembers Daishou telling him that too much oxygen would kill him, a lecture after he’d spent too much time in the high caves where only the eagles flew. Somehow, he knows that this atmosphere won’t. This is different.

Colours pop in every direction as Bokuto slowly inches towards the cottage, key grasped tightly in his sweaty palm. Golden bolts, black lightning; bright blue morning glories twined around dark vines that dance in and out of his vision, the cottage a sharp white that keeps his focus. The light is so bright that it feels like his pupils have constricted permanently into little slits.

Bokuto takes the latch off the fence, the chain loud in the silence. There is no response when he uses the knocker. When he unlocks the door with shaking hands, he can hear the mechanism click, a metallic _ka-chink_ that thunders through the blood roaring in his ears. The door swings quietly open on well-oiled hinges.

He fidgets on the doorstep a bit before awkwardly peeking into the house.

“Akaashi?” he calls tentatively. His voice sounds lighter, muffled, like he’s hearing it through a fog. “Hey, Akaashi? Are you here?”

A light thump in an unseen room, then suddenly —

The owl swoops out from behind a corner, a blur of brown feathers and strong wings.

It gives him a soft hoot, and Bokuto gives it a little huff, shoulders dropping in relief at the familiar little creature. 

“Hey.” A lopsided grin finds its way onto his face. “You dropped this, silly.”

He holds up the ribbon and the small key, a hypnotic swing of silver _._ The owl tilts its head at him, dark eyes fixed intently on his face. There’s that feeling again, heavy intensity, five thousand eyes; Bokuto chalks it down to being in this weird little bubble. “You’re lucky you can trust me! Otherwise some desperate idiot would have turned up for your master’s hand in marriage by now. Dunno how they’d find it without your — my — cat friends, though. Hey, you want me to tie this back around your neck before your master comes back? Before Akaashi comes home?”

The owl flutters to the ground, looking at him with its big soulful eyes. Bokuto crouches down, squinting at the bird; this close to it, he can see the scar, running along its right wing and well-hidden under feathers. It makes the scar on his thigh phantom-ache in sympathy.

“I don’t think I should be here,” Bokuto says lowly, frowning to himself. He turns the key over in his hand. “People would be pissed if they knew…including Akaashi, I think. I should go, but - hey, this is a faerie ring, right? Is this a curse or something?” 

He strokes down between the owl’s eyes, onto its sharp beak. The owl leans into the touch, wide unblinking dark eyes and a gentle gaze. “I’m gonna put this back on you now. But listen, okay? If this is a curse, can you tell me, somehow? Because I…I want to help.”

Out of nowhere, a soft voice.

 _Alright,_ it says.

Bokuto jolts upright, spins around to confront Akaashi, it was definitely him, he’d heard that voice over and over in his dreams — defences and apologies jump to his lips —

The clearing is as empty as it was before. 

“Huh,” Bokuto says, confused. A gust of air picks up, small purple petals floating along the currents. Bokuto plucks one out of the air, rubbing the sweet lavender between his fingers. “That’s weird, I swear I heard his voice…hey owl, what do y—GAH!!!!!”

The key hits the floor with a soft _clink_ as Bokuto trips over his own feet, backing away from Akaashi standing an _inch_ away from him, waring a smokey white tunic with a collar of fine lace. The scowl on his expression is severe; there are lavender stalks weaved into the curls of his hair.

The average person would’ve been stunned into silence and stared like fish. Bokuto is not the average person only because he is too busy defending himself.

“I’m sorry!” he immediately yelps. Akaashi crosses his arms, unimpressed. “Uh, your owl dropped your key and er I wanted to give it back, and your owl is friends with these two cats who, um, led me here, I shouldn’t be in here should I — I — this is a _faerie ring_ , Akaashi, I’m sorry, what’s — can I help, somehow? I don’t —” 

“— I think we’re good friends at this point, but I really must say: dude, you are suuuuper thick,” someone drawls from behind him, lazy and delighted. Bokuto whirls around again, overwhelmed.

This time, there are _two_ people behind him.

A man with a crooked grin flicks fringe out of his (sewn shut. _sewn shut!_ ) eye and nods at him, his remaining good eye alight with amusement. Pentas buds erupting all over his body; little puffs of small crimson petals explode periodically from the buds. Behind him, a smaller and more slender figure, a narrow face curtained by blonde hair with streaks of black shooting from the roots. Wide amber eyes emit their own eerie lamplike glow; the contours of their body are decorated with blooming yarrow buds, delicate and blood-red.

Bokuto says, “Whu?”

A familiar purring noise vibrates from the man’s throat, his black tail curling and uncurling around his legs. Black ears, hidden in the mass of spiky black hair, flick playfully, and Bokuto would’ve stepped back (again) in shock (again) if he wasn’t so painfully aware of Akaashi so _close_ behind him.

“…Kuroo??!” 

The cat sprite’s ever-permanent smirk tugs up even higher. “Bingo~!”

“You’re that mangy black cat! How! Wait wait wait, that means, which means, that’s Kenma, right?” The blonde averts their gaze, and Bokuto clenches his fists, exhilarated by the discovery that his cat friends weren’t _cats_. “The small calico! And you’re both friends with—”

And with that, the puzzle pieces click into place.

Bokuto turns slowly to face Akaashi once more, eyes narrowed. “You’re the pet owl.”

“Correct,” Akaashi says. Bokuto cannot — will not look away, mesmerised by the occasional golden bolts that shoot through his irises, his half-lidded gaze electrifying under long lashes and strong brows. His pupils are vertical slits. Akaashi Keiji is, simultaneously, terrifying and beautiful.

“But this is a faerie ring,” Bokuto spells out slowly, so terrified of having come to the wrong conclusion. “Which means, since this is your home, you’re…”

“Please calm down, Bokuto-san.” Akaashi stretches out his right arm leisurely, palm facing the sky. Bokuto’s jaw _drops_ , his eyes tracing the trailing scar, jagged and rough, down from his bicep to just short of his wrist, watches as Akaashi pulls gently on a barb and drags out a long, speckled feather.

A primary feather from the wing of a rufous-legged owl.

Bokuto desperately hopes that the awe isn’t too obvious in his eyes, because he feels like coming apart under Akaashi’s intense stare.

“Congrats,” Kuroo says. Yet another puff of red petals explode from his body, gentle specks floating in the air. “The most wanted man in both realms, and you managed to win him over.”

“But…the game,” Bokuto manages, still staring awe-struck at the feather. “People…playing, the game, the game for your hand, Akaashi…”

Akaashi shrugs. The key floats up into his hand, ribbon dangling between his fingers. “It was an elimination process,” he says. “If people treated an innocent animal as merely the key to my hand, then they clearly do not deserve the chance to play in the first place, right?”

“Right,” Bokuto repeats. His feet feel like they’ve melted into the ground. “Because if they can’t respect an animal, they’re probably a shit person anyway. But Akaashi, I’m a _hunter._ ” 

“What more is a hunter than an occupation?” A deer ambles past, safely outside the barrier. “Forgiven by nature are the ones who hunt for necessity and not fun; further, the ones who respect the hunt as a whole life in its own right.” 

“Burying the hearts of your kill and praying for them,” Kenma mutters.

“And leaving enough for the ecosystem,” Kuroo adds.

For once, Bokuto has nothing to say in return.

“You are not the only one to try and befriend me,” Akaashi continues. “People have feigned friendliness and kindness towards the little owl who seemed to be the only way to my hand. But I can tell the difference easily, Bokuto-san; those who are tainted by greed and lust are easily discernible.”

“They stink of human vice,” Kenma hisses out, no less than a whisper.

Kuroo stays silent, but the way his nails lengthen and sharpen like claws tells Bokuto all he needs to know.

“Friendliness and kindness with hidden motives mean nothing to the fae,” Akaashi continues. “Sincerity in humankind always proves superior. And no one has ever treated the owl with as much - gentleness, and selfless care - as you have.”

“Oh,” Bokuto says. 

He has never thought that such a magnificent and desired being could look so dignified and yet so lonely at the same time.

“But all I wanted to do was help the owl’s injury to start with!” Bokuto hesitates, then backtracks, “Well, _your_ injury, I guess, but I didn’t _think_ about any of that, I just wanted to help the poor bird!”

Kuroo lets out a familiar chirp, a frustrated sound that he’d often let out when the owl — when Akaashi — was just out of paw’s reach. “That’s the point, dude. You weren’t seeking reward.”

“True kindness is never acknowledged by its beholder,” Kenma whispers. “You.”

Through the terse silence, Bokuto notices an erratic thumping in the clearing over the thick air. A quick glance at Akaashi, and he realises — it’s _his_ heart, the owner of the clearing, externally so proper and dignified but internally so emotionally attuned to his home that —

Akaashi clears his throat, cheeks tinged pink, yet his gaze remain steadfast. He twists the feather this way and that, the shaft rolling between his fingers, tangling with the blue ribbon.

“I am the judge of my own game,” Akaashi says, quietly. “And I have declared you the winner.”

Forget the thumping of the clearing, Bokuto can barely hear anything over the thumping of his own heart.

“I- I dunno, I mean…I wasn’t even playing your game, Akaashi, no offence, so many people wanted you I just didn’t think — ” Bokuto squeezes his eyes shut, trying to make _himself_ think before speaking before he accidentally offends the spirit even more. “Also how was this even gonna _work_?? I mean, you’re a fucking faerie dude shouldn’t you be _avoiding_ humans —”

“I was human, once,” Akaashi interrupts. “There are many complications in the faerie realm. I still have a brief window to become human again.”

“YOU were human??” Bokuto blurts out before he has the chance to bite his tongue. Kuroo snorts behind him, obnoxious and loud; Bokuto claps a hand over his mouth and tries not to wither into a shameful heap.

Akaashi blinks at him. “I was human, yes. Albeit a while ago. Why?”

Kenma releases a soft sigh; amber eyes glow white for a brief moment before they softly announce, “He thinks you’re too beautiful and strong to have been human.”

“Pfft. Sucker,” Kuroo whispers.

Bokuto whips around in sheer horror, so overcome by embarrassment that he forgets for a brief moment that he is talking to three _fae people._ “Kenma!!!” he screeches, cheeks flaming red. “How could you!!!! Betrayal!!! I- I fed you fish!!!!”

Kenma’s tongue darts out quickly, as if relieving the taste. “Yeah. But I wanted apple pie and you wouldn’t give it to me.”

“ _I didn’t know if cats could eat apple pie, I didn’t want to kill you—_ ”

Kuroo is laughing so hard that Bokuto can see his sharp feline molars. “Dude, that is minus cheesy points,” he chokes out, practically shedding pentas petals. “Too much.”

“Shut up, Tetsurou,” Akaashi says. “And thank you, Bokuto-san, but that compliment is untrue.”

Bokuto buries his face in his hands. “Please can we move on?” he whimpers. “Let’s just accept it and move on.”

“Let’s not,” Kuroo wheezes out. “Let’s talk about the time when I was a cat and Bokuto was like, _Oh Kuroo, Akaashi was so kind to me, he washed all the blood off my clothes and just calmed me down so quick—_ ”

“Shut _up,_ Tetsurou,” Akaashi repeats, more forcefully. A stalk of lavender pulls itself out of the ground and wraps itself tightly around Kuroo’s mouth. His face has grown pleasantly red, but that might be because Kuroo then flicked his fingers and caused a cascade of pentas petals to come coughing out of Akaashi’s mouth.

Bokuto’s ears are ringing, heart beating at twice the normal rate There’s a magical charge in the air that is too strong for the human body to resist and—

A blond tail wraps loosely around Kuroo’s leg, and Kenma stares at Akaashi with glowing white eyes. “Stop it,” they whisper tiredly. “Save it for later.” 

The charge vanishes, which is just ideal, because Bokuto is very wobbley and _this_ close to dropping into a dead faint (and probably into Akaashi’s arms).

“Sorry, Bokuto-san.” Akaashi touches his forehead lightly, and Bokuto blinks like he’s just woken up, all traces of discomfort gone. “As I was saying. Yes, I was human once. But that doesn’t matter. Regardless of your interest — or supposed lack of it — towards my game, you still took the time to come warn me of possible danger at a personal risk. Correct?” 

Bokuto stares at his feet. “Yeah, but mostly because I was worried about, um, the owl…”

“If you were truly just worried about a bird that could fly off at any given moment, you would not have stayed and so stubbornly asked to help.” 

Seemingly out of thin air, Akaashi pulls out two hunting knives, holding them by their handles. The clean edges are blunted and chipped, but even so Bokuto recognises them; it’s the knives he dropped in the field that night.

“You would not have killed for me…”

Bokuto runs his fingers gingerly over the blades, dark memories suddenly surfacing. Hiding in the patch of grass, ready to strike, filled with fury and the raw instinct to _protect,_ whatever it took. Shaking to bits and covered in blood, grounded only by the cold touches that reassured him, told him that it was fine, he would be fine. Remembers the galaxies reflected Akaashi’s dark eyes as they stood barely an inch apart. 

“And even just now.” Akaashi passes a hand over the blades, and they shimmer into nonexistence. “When you first arrived, didn’t you ask if it was a curse? If this was okay? If you could help?”

Bokuto nods, dumbfounded.

Akaashi smiles at him, a small and elegant curve that makes Bokuto stand just a little bit taller.

“Love is difficult to find, Bokuto-san. That’s why it develops, slowly but surely, through thoughts and words and deeds.”

Goosebumps rise along Bokuto’s arms, the way Akaashi said _love_ echoing through his ears and bouncing around in his heart _._ “I don’t know anything about _finding_ love,” he confesses. Akaashi gives him a light one-sided shrug. “But,” he continues, trepidatiously, “then, are you saying, that, I’m, in love, with…you?”

Something bright and warm flashes across Akaashi’s expression, so quick and vivid that Bokuto wonders, stupefied, if it’s merely a hallucination of his own.

“That,” he pauses and reaches for Bokuto’s hand, tying the frayed blue ribbon around his finger before dropping his gaze, “is for you to decide.” 

Kuroo whistles, and suddenly the world starts to spin on its axis and Bokuto loses all sense of balance and direction before falling on his ass, half-blinded by normal sunlight, surrounded by the sounds of wildlife and woodland and without a single trace of the experience he had just had.

Except for the light flutter of ribbon around his ring finger — the tiny key clinking against his knuckle — and a sparse circle of lavenders scattered around him, patches of pentas and yarrows growing in a nearby ditch. 

Bokuto gathers up the sweet purple stalks, stands still for a stunned moment, and stumbles away through the trees without another word.

-

_“Well, you tried,” Kuroo says dryly as Akaashi lets out shaky breaths. The clearing thumps so hard that it feels like an earthquake. “You do know that once your century is up, you become eternally fae, right? When the mortal realm is deemed unworthy to have personal interests in?”_

_“I have an exception,” Akaashi whispers, hunched over and staring at his feather. “But my interest will be tested harshly.”_

_Kenma sways with the air, eyes closed. “But your interest is love,” he murmurs._

_“Yes.” Akaashi smiles behind his hand. “And I will willingly bear the consequences for it.”_

_Kuroo clicks his tongue. “D’you want me to follow him?”_

_“No.” Akaashi stares past the barrier and into the woods. “Bokuto-san will return.”_

_“You’re not a telepath, Akaashi.”_

_“I’m not. But I have trust in him.”_

_“Oh yeah? Based on what?”_

_With a small smile farewell, Akaashi ducks back into his cottage, tracing his long scar gently with the tip of his feather._

_“Love.”_

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! please leave opinions/kudos as you see fit - and thanks for the support ^^
> 
> edit 1/1/2020: there's a sequel now woo ^^ if you liked the open end then feel free to leave it as a one-shot, but otherwise look forward to more stuff in this verse! also my twitter is [here](https://twitter.com/silentlypunk_?s=20) for more writing/fan tidbits :)


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